Friday, September 30, 2005
What I Saw
I beheld my essence. What I saw
By Shah Nematollah Vali
(1330 - 1431)
English version by Peter Lamborn Wilson & Nasrollah Pourjavady
I beheld my essence. What I saw
Was like the very light of the eye itself:
How wonderful that a single Essence should
Refract itself like a light, a single source
Into a million essences and hues.
The being of the lover and Beloved
Are the same, for where is Love without
A lover and Beloved to be found?
Behold His Essence by His Light, that you
May be yourself the seer and the Seen.
I have wandered through the essences
And found that His Reality makes up
The essence of all beings. To ourselves
We manifest ourselves; were it not so
There could be no relationship between
The One and many. Now then, go beyond
Relation, go beyond the going-beyond
Till there remains no body, soul or being.
"All that is must perish save His face"
And in His Being ours is burned to ash.
At last I see that vision of Him requires
A subject and an object: I and He.
And yet the Essence is the same, sometimes
A wave upon the sea, sometimes the sea;
Sometimes the eye, sometimes the object of
The eye. Whoever sees this ocean knows
Our essence as we know it in ourself.
We are the waves and yet in essence we
Are not different from the sea: Reality
Is one but shows itself as two: subject
And object, two in manifestation
But not in Essence: only one Existence
Though countless its attributes. The mystery
Is still too deep for all to understand...
This profoundly philosophical poem by this ancient holy man offers us much to contemplate. For those who have undergone deep spiritual awakening, especially kundalini initiation, it will be especially meaningful The notion of beloved and lover as one, the concept of the one and the many, the end of the journey as annihilation into the beloved--these are familiar categories of the mystical experience. It is quite impressive to find these ideas expressed in a work composed many hundreds of years ago. The mystical experience remains the same, basically unchanged over time and space.
Once again, I copied this poem from Ivan Granger's wondrous site. Ivan offers us all an amazing gift, as he uncovers more and more of ancient wisdom expressed through sacred poetry. (see www.poetry-chaikhana.com where you can in fact sign up to receive a new poem each day.)
